


Her Scarlet Touch

by masulevin



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Blow Jobs, Bondage, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, From Sex to Love, Light Dom/sub, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sex Work, Sub Cullen Rutherford
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:59:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27164903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masulevin/pseuds/masulevin
Summary: Life in Kirkwall is more stressful than Cullen ever could have pictured when he first stepped foot in the Gallows. He's wound tight and on edge, and he's making life miserable for the Templars under his command.Their solution? Buying him a night at the Blooming Rose with Avita, the only woman they think can remove the stick from their Knight-Captain's ass.An emotional slow burn where Cullen learns some things about himself, with fem-dom spice in every chapter.
Relationships: Cullen Rutherford/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 19





	Her Scarlet Touch

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote for thirsty reasons, published for spite reasons. No particular update schedule.
> 
> [Follow me on tumblr](HTTPs://ma-sulevin.tumblr.com/).

Cullen can’t remember the last time he was this nervous. Was it the day he reported to Kinloch? Was it the day he landed in Kirkwall’s harbor and stared up at the statues as he tried not to lose the water he’d barely been managing to keep down? Was it when the Qunari stormed the city?

Well. He wipes his hands on his tunic as subtly as possible and decides this is probably less terrifying than being faced with an oncoming Qunari hoard, but only just.

The inside of the Blooming Rose is as decadent and horrifying as it always has been, not that Cullen’s spent much time inside its walls, and he’s immediately assaulted by the cloying clouds of perfume and drunken laughter of patrons. A woman approaches him as soon as she spots him, and he struggles to keep his gaze away from the dangerously low cut of her dress, but he’s only marginally successful if the smirk on her painted lips is any indication.

Maker, he wishes he kept his armor on instead of opting for his less-noticeable plainclothes. 

“Hello there, sweet thing,” she says, blinking long eyelashes at him. “Would you like some wine? Some ale?” She rests her hand on his chest and something flashes in her expression that he can’t quite identify. “Anything you want, you can have.”

He clears his throat and shifts away from her, just moving his weight to rest on his back foot. “I am actually here to meet someone.”

“Oh?” She doesn’t move her hand. “Maybe I can help you find her.”

He licks his lips and scans the room as though he would be able to identify the woman on sight when in reality he’s never seen her before in his life. Instead of speaking, he reaches into his pocket and produces the receipt the other Templars had gleefully presented him with, laughing at his expense, saying a visit to  _ her  _ would loosen him up, possibly even remove the staff from where they were absolutely  _ certain  _ one had been stuck.

The woman takes the receipt and opens it from the quarters he’d folded it into, reads it quickly, then folds it back up and offers him another smile, no less bright than the one she’d greeted him with in the first place.

“Come with me, please, messere.”

He opens his mouth to object, but she doesn’t give him the chance, turning away from him and pushing her way through the crowded room with her head held high and the full skirts of her dress sweeping out behind her. 

He doesn’t really have a choice but to follow.

She leads him up the wide stairs, then up a set of smaller ones, before finally stopping in front of a door. She opens it for him and gestures for him to go first, so he does, and then he turns back around to her because the room is empty save for the furniture he can barely bring himself to look at.

“Your girl will be with you shortly,” she says, and then she shuts the door with a resounding thud.

It’s solid, thick.

It will probably block out sounds, for good or ill.

He turns back to the room, hands still sweaty, and wipes his palms off on his trousers this time. There’s a very large bed on the wall facing the door, mostly out of its view, with too many pillows and fabrics that look soft, curtains draping from the frame — to completely block it from the door, he supposes.

A few unsteady steps deeper into the room expose the rest of it to his gaze: a vanity, with a mirror and low stool, a wardrobe, a small trunk, a plush chair placed just so in one corner, a little footstool in front of it and a table by its side.

He takes another step toward the chair, then thinks better of it.

His only intention in coming to this place is to  _ cancel _ his reservation, to tell her that she needn’t wait on him, needn’t waste her time when she could be finding an, ah, more appreciative client to spend her evening with.

A door opens behind what he thought to be a decorative folding screen in the corner, and he doesn’t have time to do anything but take a deep breath before a woman appears, holding a tray with drinks. There’s already a smile on her face, but it grows a bit when she sees him, and he feels a flush of embarrassment at it.

She is beautiful, the sort of woman he would expect to see in the Hightown markets, save for the low cut of her dress, and the sheer material that makes him want to… She’s tall and slender, with blonde hair curled just so and bright eyes that seem to grow brighter when he doesn’t speak or move or acknowledge her presence beyond the fact that he seems to have forgotten how to breathe at all.

“Would you like some wine, messere?” She puts the tray on the table as she speaks, and he cannot prevent his gaze from following the lean line of her back down to the swell of her hips. “It is Antivan, my absolute favorite vintage.”

She pours two glasses and stands back up to her full height, and he still hasn’t spoken a word. 

He does not want to drink wine with her — truthfully he doesn’t particularly enjoy the taste of wine — but he finds his tongue too thick to speak, and the problem only increases as she closes the space between them to offer him one of the glasses. 

This close, he can see the bright, sky blue of her eyes and the lines around them. She’s older than she seems, he thinks, possibly older than he is, but he finds himself tapping his glass against hers and drinking the wine before he remembers he didn’t want any at all.

It’s nice enough, he supposes, certainly better than anything he would find at the Gallows, and it won’t hurt to have something to soothe his nerves, so he finishes it in one long draught and catches her beaming up at him.

“Thirsty?” 

She takes the glass and goes to refill it, but he shakes his head at her. She stills, tilting her head to the side to look up at him from under her eyelashes, and he feels a new embarrassment building within him.

He finds her beautiful.

“You, ah, that is, I…” He trails off, thoroughly distracted by both the way she’s smiling patiently up at him and by the heat he feels on his cheeks. He’s blushing, he knows it, Maker take him. “I’m sorry.”

“Whatever for?”

“I should not have come.”

She’s still smiling at him, but it’s a little softer, and it does nothing to quell the overwhelming knowledge that he’s made a mistake by coming here at all. He should have simply stayed at the Gallows, perhaps gone to the Wounded Coast instead, worked until he was falling asleep on his feet, avoided all of this entirely.

“Messere, I promise, we are very discrete here.” Her glass is still mostly full, the barest imprint from the gloss on her lips on the rim, but she turns and places both on the table. Again, he finds his gaze drawn downwards as though he has no self-control, and he balls his hands into fists. “You needn’t worry about anyone finding out about your visit, lest you tell them yourself.”

“No,” he tries again, not sure how to make her understand the guilt swirling through him without telling her more than he’s ever told another. “There’s no one who would, who would be  _ angry  _ at me for, ah, but…”

He gives up once more, hopeless, and holds his hands out in a motion that’s half shrug, half plea for help. She’s studying him with too much clarity, too much understanding, and she simply takes his hands in both of hers. And pulls him forward.

He stumbles into motion, and he’s afraid he’s going to  _ fall  _ on her, but she steps back with all the grace he does not possess and simply leads him to the chair and bids him to sit.

He does, unable to disobey, still desperate to make her understand he should not be here.

She stands before him, his head now even with her breasts, and he looks down at his lap until she puts her fingers on his chin and redirects his gaze up to her face. 

“We provide a  _ service  _ here, messere, and I am very, very good at what I do, but rarely do I have the opportunity to see a man so handsome.” Now he’s blushing for a new reason, though he’s certain she must say this to anyone who is uncomfortable in her room. “Unless I am sorely mistaken, you have already paid Madam Lucine downstairs, yes?”

He shakes his head, but with her standing in the space between his knees and her nails pressing against his chin, he can't move away. Instead, he admits, “No, ah, some of the knight-captains…”

He trails off, humiliation blooming bright at the admission. He couldn't even come to the Rose on his own, choose his own whore and pay for his own time with her, and that’s why he's in this position.

Instead of the condemnation he expected on her face, her smile blooms into something sharper, something that turns the hot bloom of humiliation into something sharper too.

“Well, we wouldn't want your friends to waste their hard-earned coin, would we?” She tilts her head to the side as she stares down at him, and the heat inside him begins to move down, move deeper, and he still wants to go back to his rooms but now it's to be alone, to take a few minutes to work himself hard and spend into his own hand. She doesn't give him the option to move, standing strong and tall and too close. “Will you let me help you?”

No.

“Yes.”

She swipes her thumb across his mouth, catching a bit on his lower lip, and he can’t help but gasp at the intimacy of it, lips parting under her touch. She grins at that and pushes him a bit at the shoulder, encouraging him to lean back in the chair to rest against the too-stiff back.

He obeys her, leaning where she directs him, and blushes fiercely as she kneels between his thighs with a fluid motion, not taking her eyes away from his at all. Her smile never wavers, eyes bright in the room’s flickering lamplight, and he grips the arms of the chair too tight as she runs her fingers up and down his thighs, teasing him once more.

“Have you ever had someone pleasure you with their mouth, messere?”

He shakes his head, then makes what must be his hundredth mistake of the evening by simply saying, “Cullen.”

Her hands don’t stop their slow movement up and down his thighs, though they inch higher with each stroke, though he’s growing quite hard in his trousers and she’s sure to notice. “Cullen,” she repeats, dragging out the sound, and there’s a traitorous twitch between his thighs at the sound of his name on her lips. “You can call me Avita. Are you ready?”

She starts to pluck at his trouser ties, and he lets her, fingernails starting to dig into the wood of the chair as he sits silent and just watches.

She arches one eyebrow as she frees him from his pants, pulling his hardness out into the still air of her room, and he almost misses the expression through the blinding wave of pleasure that washes over him at the first touch of her fingers on his skin. 

“Look at me, Cullen.” He does, though it’s a struggle to keep his eyes open, a struggle to keep his hands on the arms of the chair because he’s afraid of what will happen if he touches her like he so desperately wants to. She’s still smiling, her eyes are still bright, and he knows it’s her job but it’s almost like she’s enjoying having her hand wrapped around his length, enjoying the slow way she’s stroking him. “Relax. Watch me. Tell me what you like — I want this to feel good.”

He nods at her, but he doesn’t relax, he can’t. He does keep his eyes on her, watches as her gaze drops to his length and watches as she licks her lips.

He watches as she leans forward and licks the tip of him, watches as she slides his foreskin back and licks around the head, watches as she glances up through her lashes and sucks him into her mouth, just a bit, just enough for the pressure to be tight and hot and the best thing that has happened to him since Amell — no.

He cuts off the thought, refuses it, squeezes his eyes closed to focus his mind on the way her hand slowly pumps him, the way her tongue never stops moving, the way she sucks on him like he’s something delicious for her, a treat instead of a chore.

He wants to thrust into the wet heat of her mouth, wants to find more pleasure in it, wants to rush toward his end like he does when he’s in the comfort of his own room and not sitting rigid in a chair in a brothel, but he doesn’t move, holds himself still and lets her do what she wants with him.

And what she wants to do seems to be taking him to the back of her throat, because suddenly the entire length of him seems to be inside her mouth, wet and hot, and she swallows, and his eyes fly open to see her eyes squeezed closed and her lips stretched around him, and he digs his heels into the carpet and he pushes as though he can get away from her.

She releases him as the chair moves under her, but she grabs the arms and yanks it back down with a frown.

Her chin is a bit wet, and he stares at it so hard he barely notices what she says.

“—wrong?”

“Ah…” His gaze snaps back up to her eyes, humiliation growing inside him once more, expecting judgment, disapproval, the knowledge that something is  _ wrong  _ with him because he can’t just sit here and take it, but… he sees nothing but concern, her eyebrows drawn together, her eyes a little cloudy.

“Are you hurt?”

“No, no, Maker, ah…” He clears his throat, shifts in his seat, tries to relax, but he’s absolutely throbbing for her touch between his legs, and her saliva is cooling in the open air, and he doesn’t know what to say so he just — “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Hurt me?” She lifts her brow at him, confusion plain as the nose on her face “You haven’t even touched me.”

“Er—”

She glances at his fingers, still digging into the arms, and then she draws her lower lip into her mouth for a moment before she speaks again, her voice coming out a little lower, a little rougher, some accent that doesn’t belong to Kirkwall slipping into her consonants. “You don’t want to take from me, do you, Cullen?” He can’t speak, not when she’s gotten so close to the heart of it, so he just shakes his head. “You want to be good… kind to me?” This time, he nods.

She returns one hand to his length, stroking him back to full hardness.

He groans, deep in his chest, then flushes hot at the noise even though she smiles.

“I have an idea that may help you relax, if you’re amenable,” she offers, still stroking him, and he can only keep his eyes on her because she asked him to, didn’t she, before he forgot and closed them, and when he doesn’t find the words to answer, she says, “If you would be more comfortable  _ unable  _ to take from me, I have something that can… mmm, keep your hands still? Perhaps… restrained?”

His hands tied? His lips part on a sharp inhale that has nothing to do with the motion of her hands on him and his length twitches again, more than willing to let her know how it feels about things when his words consistently fail him.

He nods, finally. And she gives him one firm stroke that has him grunting again before she stands up.

He sits just where he is, doesn’t move, doesn’t even touch himself, and just watches as she walks — no, as she slinks across the room and bends at the waist to open the trunk he’d spotted right away. He can’t see its contents, but he can guess at what it contains when she stands back upright with a length of red silk between her hands.

She looks over her shoulder at him, eyes glinting, and then slinks back as she runs the silk between her fingers. He watches her, watches the way her skirts swirl around her like they weigh nothing, watches the way the smooth skin of her bare leg is exposed to him when she moves just right before it disappears again under the fabric.

Once she’s close enough, she puts her fingers back on him, just on his arm, running them up to his shoulder as she circles around to stand behind him. He nearly jumps when she leans down and speaks directly into his ear, asking him to put his hands back behind him the best he can. Her lips brush against his skin, and he finds himself wishing for the feel of her teeth even as he obeys.

She ties his wrists together around the chair, looping the silk around them so that he can barely feel it until she stands straight and he tests the bonds.

He can barely move his hands, much less his arms, and the knowledge that she can now  _ take  _ from him when he can’t take from her…

He shivers with his whole body, his length twitching openly, a drop of spend appearing at the tip before it begins to drip down just in time for Avita to drop to her knees once more and lick him clean.

She watches him as she does, and he stares into her eyes because she seems to want him to, muscles in his arms twitching as he lets himself relax into a struggle against the bonds holding him in check.

There’s a way to trust in himself here, in the way he knows he won’t be able to hurt her, not without breaking the chair, which he isn’t strong enough to do. He can relax into it, knowing he won’t be able to grab her and make her do what he wants…

And he won’t have to, because she’s doing what he wants anyway, leaning down to pull his length fully into her mouth again, just the way she had before, just the way he had imagined a woman doing when he was alone in his rooms at night, armed with just his hand and a bottle of oil.

There’s nothing in this from the demons at the tower, nothing in this that doesn’t feel good or right, not with his hands safe behind him and  _ her  _ hands cupping his sac like she was born to it, not with her tongue laving him over and over and…

Pleasure sparks up his spine, makes his eyes close even though he wants to  _ memorize  _ the way her lips look wrapped around him, the way her forehead is furrowed in concentration, the way his skin is glistening with her saliva as she bobs her head and works him so perfectly.

It’s too much.

It’s too much, and  _ Maker, _ he never wants it to end.

His shoulders flex as he wants to push her away again, and the silk she used to bind him digs into his skin, and he loses himself with a hoarse shout and spills down her throat without warning, without even asking if that’s what she wanted him to do.

Sparks dance behind his eyelids as he curls in on himself, pulsing on her tongue, hands still straining against his binding, grunting as it  _ just won’t stop _ and her tongue keeps working him past the point of comfort.

“Oh, Maker,” he says, he  _ moans,  _ finally coming back to himself, almost coherent even, breath coming back to him in long, deep gasps. 

She’s still kneeling between his legs, looking absolutely smug when he finally opens his eyes, her hands resting on his knees as she waits for him to calm down.

“Everything you’ve been dreaming of, Cullen?”

He finds himself nodding, telling most of the truth, and then the rest of it spills from his lips in a rush: “More than.”

She laughs, absolutely delighted, and if he didn’t know better, he’d say it’s a genuine sound.

She stands with a dancer’s grace and moves behind him to unite the silk, pausing long enough to rub at his shoulders as he stretches them out, encouraging feeling to come back into the joints.

He doesn’t know what to say into the silence that stretches between them, sated and sleepy, but he knows he can’t stay. He knows he has to leave, go back to the Gallows, he just… 

“Thank you.”

He cringes as he says it. It’s too raw, too honest, and the embarrassment is back and it’s too soon since he finished for it to turn into anything resembling lust.

Avita doesn’t laugh though, doesn’t do much more than smile as she comes around to his front. She puts her fingers under his chin again and tips his face up so he’ll look at her as he tucks himself away and fixes the ties.

Her face is soft, her curls barely mussed from… from what she did.

“Come back and see me, Cullen. Yeah?”

He blinks once, certain that’s a mistake.

Aloud, he says, “Yes, Avita.”

Her smile grows. “Good.”


End file.
